Mr. Hero

Mr. Hero is a chain of about 80 retaurants, primarily centered in Cleveland, which serves subs and sandwiches with a vaguely Mediterranean twinge to them. There’s a shop here and there all over the area, and folks seem to know them for their convenience; the food is cheap, comes fast, and is filling. For these merits, I just couldn’t find anything in the place that really impressed me at all, and there isn’t anything about the place that is good enough to try if you’ve never heard of the place.

The signature dish, the “Roman Burger,” doesn’t make a lot of sense, but the flavor is all right. It’s not a burger but a sub, served with several small, thin burger patties which are topped with a vinaigrette of oil and spices, as well as onions, lettuce and tomatoes. The sub/burger mashup sounds kind of cool, but the fact is one standard Romanburger comes close to 900 calories and 15 grams of salt. If you care about your diet this will wreck it. If you don’t, all of the sauce and oil will still make you feel gross. A 10-inch sandwich/burger is $5 and it’s filling, though, and I will say it’s the thing I liked most on the menu.

I did not like the gyro, though, which seemed to have so much in common with the Romanburger. Don’t order it with the chicken, because the chicken is very bland. It needs salt and pepper to begin with, but one way or another, no amount of vegetables and oily cucumber sauce covers that up. On the bright side, the place serves waffle fries, so they’re pretty good. The chronic problem is that everything on the menu is so greasy that it’s just hard to get behind that, though.

The restaurant is built for speed and convenience, not comfort. You get the food and go as fast as you can. The people are also wired in the same way, which some people find bothersome, but I don’t mind. All told, though, I know a lot of native Clevelanders love the local places a lot, so I’m sure there’s good reason this chain has become so big, but the experience just did not impress me. If you’re from out of town and you have to drop by, I don’t really know what to recommend for you.

Recommendations

If you get a Romanburger, I suggest saving half for later. It’s filling.

Also, I suggest asking explicitly for them to go light on the sauce. If your sandwich is smothered, it’s really ruined.

The shops in this chain generally have longer hours and are open holidays, so that’s convenient.